Showing posts with label folding bicycles. Show all posts
Showing posts with label folding bicycles. Show all posts

Saturday, August 27, 2016

Folding Bikes Now and Then

citizen bike
My new cycling acquisition (a gift at no cost)

The folding bike has been around longer than you might think . . . . .

Folding Bicycle 1895
St. Paul daily globe. (Saint Paul, Minn.), 30 June 1895. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Library of Congress. http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn90059522/1895-06-30/ed-1/seq-16/

FOLDING BICYCLE
It May Be Doubled Up So As To Occupy Half Its Ordinary Space

Bicycle inventors come thick and fast. American inventive genius apparently has concentrated upon the wheel. Every week some inventor comes forward with some new device designed to make cycling easier or safer or faster or to make a wheel lighter. In France, however, the inventors. are experimenting with petroleum-driven bicyclettes. Why petroleum is better than the human leg, and why the "machine should be dubbed bicyclette are questions only a plausible Frenchman can answer. The petroleum bicyclette participated in the recent road race between Paris and Bordeaux. It gave a good account of itself.

A folding bicycle is, the newest novelty in the steel steed line. By a simple and ingenious arrangement the connecting rods of the frame may be folded until the machine is reduced to the size of one wheel, as shown in the illustration.

The inventor claims for the folding bicycle the possibility of storing it in one's room, the ease with which it may be carried up or down stairs or hoisted in dumbwaiters or elevators. It can be readily, doubled up for carrying on the shoulder up and down bad roads. Such a bicycle can be readily placed in a carriage or other vehicle for transportation. Doubtless, also, the policeman who has had an experience in leading the bicycle of a prisoner to the stationhouse will appreciate the merits a machine that can be folded up and carried under the arm, where it is powerless to work injury.

The inventor claims further that in its folded shape, the bicycle may be securely locked, but seems to forget that in its portable shape it presents an extraordinary inducement to the intending thief.

The folding bicycle is one of the things that, now that it has been invented, will cause people to wonder why it had not been thought of before. Dwellers in flats, however, where there are tenants given to storing their wheels in the lower hallway will be inclined to send their personal thanks to the genius who has shown how the most unwieldy thing ever invented - that is, while in state of repose — may be made less obtrusive and less dangerous. There is no reason why it shouldn't be hung up on a peg out of everybody's way.

The man who invented the baby carriage which could be flattened out and jerked under the bed or stool against the wall behind a sofa worked a great benefaction. It was the best thing since the jointed fishing rod. Then a Brooklyn man invented a piano which could be readily be taken apart and carried up the narrow stairways of an apartment house and, then set up in a little room, instead of being swung into an outside window, as a safe is generally put into an office building. But there are more bicycles than there are either baby carriages or pianos in New York, so for the present the inventor of the folding, bicycle is entitled to a seat on the right side of the throne.

Sunday, December 22, 2013

Kickstarter Risk Example - E-Bike Co. Goes Bust

I suppose I should take care not to appear obsessed with Kickstarter . . .

For a while I have looked at the Bike Portland blog fairly regularly because I guess I thought of Portland as somehow advanced in its support for cycling. Now I'm not so sure "advanced" is the right word, but anyway, it is a source of bike related news that can be stimulating to read.

They just had a blog post about a company ceasing operation - the company, Conscious Commuter, was trying to bring a folding e-bike for commuter use to market. Although not evident from their web site, they have packed it in - the Bike Portland blog post quotes extensively from an email sent out from the company to its Kickstarter supporters.



So yes, in addition to other funding sources, this company sought and got $25,000 through a Kickstarter effort. Thirteen of the people who contributed were at the $1,395 level, for which the "reward" was to be, "You are pre-ordering and will receive a numbered, signed, limited edition folding e-bike, numbered in the order your Kickstarter pledge was placed. In addition to special pricing, you will get another pre-release offer -- a 2 year warranty!" (Estimated deliver - March 2012.) Anyway - no, that didn't and isn't happening, as it turns out. Instead you get an email more than two years later that says, "We appreciate your support of Conscious Commuter. We wish we had been able to raise the additional funds needed to continue what we believed was a very promising business- but after two and a half years filled with momentous achievements and challenges, financial issues have forced us to close our doors." Actually the email says a lot of other blather. At this point anyone who gave them $1,395 is probably not too surprised.

Since this proposal was made in 2011, Kickstarter has tried to clarify that there is some risk in such things with their "Kickstarter is not a store!" blog post, that requires proposal to include a "risks and challenges" section (which the e-bike proposal didn't have) but in my experience these never say, "there is risk we spend the money on something other than producing the thing you think you will get."

Just from the fifteen minutes or so I have spent acquainting myself with this effort (admittedly after the fact) it appears they had problems staying on track. Even the Kickstarter people say, "under-promise and over-deliver" - instead they seemed to have tried to come up with every conceivable variant imaginable - the same bike without the electric drive, the same bike with the e-drive but you don't have to (or can't?) pedal the thing, even a version in carbon fiber.


A slick video pushing a carbon-fiber variant

Most amazing to me, for a project that involves Kickstarter funding, is the "about us" page on the Conscious Commuter site. (This page is most likely going to disappear soon, but no worries, I used the Internet Archive's "archive this" functionality to make a copy for posterity, which is here: https://web.archive.org/web/20131222164759/http://www.consciouscommuter.com/pages/our-people-1.) I mean, good lord, the company describes nine different management or adviser types and nothing about anybody who puts their hands on a bicycle!! You know, to make one. The 25,000 bucks from Kickstarter, less the five percent to Kickstarter and the credit card charges, wouldn't pay for this crew's $ needs for very long. (Yeah, I get that maybe one of these people was focusing on this full-time - but still, can't they say something about someone who gets grease on his hands occasionally?)

Again, it's easy for me to look at this critically more than two years after they created their Kickstarter proposal. Perhaps there is something be learned here. Hmm.